In a move which is more pointless than having a plot in a blue movie, U.S. government lawyers have attempted to revive a 1998 law designed to keep online pornography from children.

The law, which was canned because it blocks too much legal speech while having no effect on content posted from overseas, is so old that it does not include any modern technology. The Child Online Protection Act would make it a crime for Web publishers to let children access material deemed "harmful to minors" by "contemporary community standards."

Anyone wanting to look at such sites will have to show a credit card number or other proof of age. When it first appeared the law was laughed out because sexual health sites, the media site Salon.com and other Web publishers sued and won a temporary injunction that the U.S. Supreme Court later upheld.

Why the Bush administration thinks that the law will do better these days is unclear. It does not have chat rooms, You Tube and other interactive sites that have emerged in the last decade.